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BIG PHYSICS, BIG QUESTIONS –

60 Seconds

Asteroid hunter is go

NASA’s mission to collect samples from asteroid Bennu just got the green light. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled for launch in 2016 and should arrive in 2018. It is set to bring back 60 grams of material to Earth. The samples could fill in details of the early solar system and prepare for an eventual human trip to an asteroid.

Tinder-dry Amazon

Worsening droughts will burn more of the Amazon than we thought. An eight-year field study found that tree deaths from fire doubled or quadrupled in dry years, destroying a quarter of the canopy in the affected area (PNAS, 10.1073/pnas.1305499111).

Prostate relapse

A man’s blood group could affect his chances of prostate cancer returning after treatment. In a study of 555 men with the cancer, those with blood type A were 35 per cent more likely to relapse than those with type O, a meeting of the European Association of Urology in Stockholm, Sweden, was told.

Liver killer tamed

Hepatitis C is called the silent killer because by the time symptoms of liver cirrhosis appear, it’s too late. But trials in which patients took the antiviral drugs sofosbuvir and ledipasvir have been an unprecedented success, leaving 97 per cent of 1952 people virus-free (The New England Journal of Medicine, doi.org/r92).

Big Bird flies in

The highest-energy cosmic neutrino ever detected has a name&colon; Big Bird. Spotted by the IceCube detector at the South Pole and reported at the American Physical Society meeting on 7 April, the high-powered particle follows two earlier cosmic neutrinos nicknamed Bert and Ernie. Such neutrinos can tell us about distant events such as supernovae.